Telkom Group’s Digital Business Investment in Kredivo Shows Positive

PT Telkom Indonesia (Persero) Tbk (TLKM)’s investment move in the digital business showed positive results following Kredivo, a credit-based digital financial payment platform that is a portfolio startup of MDI Ventures, which recently announced its plan to become a public company.

The grand plan began with the merger of Kredivo with a subsidiary of Victory Park Capital (VPC), a global investment company headquartered in Chicago. With an equity value that is predicted to reach US$ 2.5 billion, Kredivo will enter a new era as a unicorn.

MDI Ventures, a subsidiary of Telkom, has been funding Kredivo since 2018 followed by second funding the following year with Telkomsel Mitra Innovation (TMI).

The investment value at that time was around 8% of the total first round funding conducted by MDI Ventures. With the predicted value of Kredivo’s equity after becoming a public company, the investment value of MDI Ventures in Kredivo is expected to generate significant capital gains.

Telkom’s Strategic Portfolio Director Budi Setyawan Wijaya said that TelkomGroup welcomed Kredivo’s big plan to become a public company as well as a unicorn.

According to him, this is the sweet fruit of Telkom’s investment strategy and commitment in digital business which is run through MDI Ventures and TMI.

“Not only potential capital gains that we may be able to obtain, but the most important thing that is expected from this investment is also, of course, the synergy value with MDI’s startup portfolio will support the development of Telkom’s digital business, especially in the platform and services domain,” said Budi in his official statement, Sunday (8/8).

MDI Ventures Success List Grows if Kredivo Becomes a Unicorn

Kredivo’s presence as a unicorn in the near future will add to the list of MDI Ventures’ success in investing, where previously Nium, an MDI portfolio startup, has also become the first B2B payments unicorn from Southeast Asia with a valuation of over US$1 billion.

“Hopefully Kredivo’s successful steps can be followed by local startups from Indonesia who were born as new unicorns, and TelkomGroup through MDI will continue to strive to support this realization. In the near future, hopefully, other MDI portfolio startups will conduct IPOs on domestic and foreign exchanges,” added Budi.

MDI Ventures has invested in 15 new startups spread across four countries in 2020, so that the total of MDI has invested in more than 50 startups in Indonesia and globally (in more than 12 countries).

This year, MDI will focus on investing in agritech, fintech, logistics, new retail, health, and deep tech.

Finding Potential Startups through Synergy Value

Not only looking for startups that have the potential to generate capital gains, but MDI has the task of finding startups that are able to encourage TelkomGroup’s digital business and BUMN through synergy value.

MDI Ventures CEO Donald Wihardja stated that investing in Kredivo is one of the most ideal examples of returns for MDI Ventures investments.

He said that Kredivo not only succeeded in providing capital gains many times over for investment, but also succeeded in producing various synergy projects that gave value to Telkom and accelerated Kredivo’s performance.

“Therefore, MDI continues to support efforts to establish a digital business ecosystem in Telkom and SOEs by using solutions that have been proven by MDI startups,” said Donald.

The synergy value that has been implemented between Telkom Group and Kredivo is the use of Telkomsel’s big data in credit scoring.

“Hopefully Kredivo’s successful steps can be followed by local startups from Indonesia who were born as new unicorns, and Telkom Group through MDI will continue to strive to support this realization. In the near future, hopefully, other MDI portfolio startups will conduct IPOs on domestic and foreign exchanges,” said Budi.